Desert Island Discs…Sarah McLachlan, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”

I listened to this CD from Sarah McLachlan the other night and it STILL kicked my ass, more than 15 years since it was first released.  I remember my initial encounter with this album because I saw it before I heard it. 

I was on an airplane and did not purchase the headphones (cheap even then!).  On the screen, I watched a video that I had never seen before.  Lots of candles and this very good-looking gal at the center of the action.  It was Sarah McLachlan’s “Possession,” the first single from “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.”  I went out and bought the album and just LOVED it. 

The title of the album alone is brilliant enough.  Who among us has not been, is not, or at some point hopes to be fumbling towards ecstasy?  Hell, I’m two for three just sitting here!  (The only album title that rivals this one in recent memory is “Wincing the Night Away,” a wonderful disc by The Shins.  Been there, done that, too, I’m afraid.)

Beyond the title, there was something about “Possession” and its opening lyrics (and McLachlan’s imperfect, but beautiful voice) that struck me as both thoughtful and somehow very sexual:

Listen as the wind blows
From across the great divide
Voices trapped in yearning
Memories trapped in time
The night is my companion
And solitude my guide
Would I spend forever here
And not be satisfied 

“Possession” is my favorite song on the album, but “Good Enough” and “Hold On” are excellent as well. 

On “Good Enough,” McLachlan sings:

Don’t tell me I haven’t been good to you
Don’t tell me I have never been there for you
Don’t tell me why nothing is good enough

On “Hold On,” McLachlan sings (I think) about the looming death of her lover:

Oh God, if you’re out there won’t you hear me
I know that we’ve never talked before
Oh God, the man I love is leaving
Won’t you take him when he comes to your door

The last track is the title track and the chorus is as follows:

And if I shed a tear, I won’t cage it
I won’t fear love
And if I feel a rage, I won’t deny it
I won’t fear love

Me neither, Sarah.

Desert Island Discs: Toad the Wet Sprocket, “Dulcinea”

I had the great pleasure of seeing Toad the Wet Sprocket play Webster Hall in New York City last week.  I have always been a big fan of these guys and many of the songs they played were from “Dulcinea,” the band’s 1994 masterpiece.

How can you not love an album that contains a song (“Nanci“) with these opening lyrics: I can’t believe you/You bend your words Like Uri Geller’s spoons.”  Smart.  Funny.  Goddamn brilliant.

“Nanci” is one of my favorite songs on “Dulcinea,” but there are many others.  The album’s two radio hits, “Something’s Always Wrong” and “Fall Down” are excellent, as is the opening track, “Fly From Heaven,” which begins with these lyrics:

Paul is making me nervous
Paul is making me scared
Walk into this room and swaggers
Like he’s God’s own messenger

I read somewhere that this song is written from the perspective of one of the apostles, James, and is about Paul the apostle and the struggle of faith after the death of Jesus.  Not so funny.  Still brilliant.

I lost my copy of “Dulcinea” several years ago and simply could not find it no matter where I looked.  Eventually, I stopped looking.  As loyal readers of my blog will recall, I parted ways with my wife last year and moved out of my house into a new apartment.  One of the few items that I brought with me was an old CD rack system that had been gathering dust in a closet.  I hooked it up and hit the “Open/Close” button on the CD player.   There, resting comfortably in the CD tray, was “Dulcinea.”

Hello, old friend.

Desert Island Discs… Tim Finn, “Before & After”

I first heard Tim Finn at Radio City Music Hall in the early 1990’s.  He was opening for 10,000 Maniacs and I loved his stuff.  The album he was promoting at the time, “Tim Finn,” easily could be one of my desert island discs — if only for the line, “When I came running to you, I was following the light from a dead star,” which is on the track “Not Even Close.”  But I am limiting myself to one disc per artist and so I am choosing instead a later album, “Before & After.”

A member of both Split Enz and Crowded House before going solo, Finn is a thinking man’s musician.  His lyrics are smart and soulful and, to be honest, occasionally overreaching and treacly.  There are a few misses on “Before & After,” but the hits are numerous, anchored by two killer love songs, “Protected” and “Walk You Home.”

On “Walk You Home,” Finn pledges that he will always be there for his lover, even if she doesn’t yet realize that she someday will need him.   As the song hits its climax, Finn sings:

Oh, when the days drag on too long
When your strong resolve is broken
Resistance merely token
I’ll be there beside you.
Oh, when the night comes crashing down
Stars will fall and sky will thunder
You’ll hesitate and blunder
I’ll be there to walk you home.

Isn’t that what we all want, really?  Someone who will be there to help pick up the pieces if/when it all goes to hell?  He repeats that last line a few times and then adds, in a quiet voice, almost as an aside, “If you let me.” 

Very good stuff on a most excellent disc.

Desert Island Discs… Weezer, “Pinkerton”

This is the fourth in a series about music that has shaped my life or that simply kicks major ass.  Greatest hits collections not included.

Weezer are the kings of nerd rock and, since I am a nerd who likes to rock, they have always been one of my favorite bands.  “Pinkerton” was released in 1996 and is considered by many Weezer fans, myself included, to be their best album.  I heard it for the first time at a record store near Herald Square in New York City.  This was around the time when stores began setting up those “listening stations” where you can slap on some headphones (yuck) and listen to a little bit of every track on a CD before making your purchase. 

The first track on “Pinkerton” is “Tired of Sex,” which begins with the memorable lines, “I’m tired.  So tired.  I’m tired of having sex.”  Me too, boys.  The song builds in intensity and by the time the guitar solo kicks in, it’s hard not to just hurl your body across the room and into a pile of something valuable.  I bought the disc on the spot. 

The one hit single from the album, “El Scorcho,” is actually among my least favorite tracks.  It’s silly and not very interesting musically — though I must begrudgingly give props to any song that begins, “Goddamn you half-Japanese girls/Do it to me every time.”

“The Good Life” is especially relevant to this blog, with its opening line, “When I look in the mirror/I can’t believe what I see.  Tell me who’s that funky dude/Starin’ back at me?”  The song perfectly captures that “What the fuck has happened to my life?” feeling that is increasingly powerful now that I am less than three months shy of turning 40.  “I don’t want to be lonely anymore,” the song goes.  “It’s been a year or two since I was out on the floor.  Shakin’ booty, makin’ sweet love all the night.  It’s time I got back to the good life.”  Amen.

On “Pink Triangle,” lead singer Rivers Cuomo laments about falling in love with a girl who turns out to be a lesbian.  “Everyone’s a little queer,” he pleads.  “Oh, can’t she be a little straight?”  I’ve heard this line about 500 times, but it still makes me smile because it brilliantly and succinctly captures the desperation of love that we’ve all felt at some point.

The album closes with the ballad “Butterfly,” a disturbing little song that has never made any sense to me, but that I like a lot anyway.  It ends with the line, “I told you I would return/When the robin makes his nest.  But I ain’t ever coming back.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Ah, nothing to be sorry about Weezer.  You have made a wonderful album that sounds as good to me today as it did more than a decade ago.

Desert Island Discs… John Hiatt, “Slow Turning”

This is the third in a series about music that has shaped my life or that simply kicks major ass.  Greatest hits collections not included.

If you put a gun to my head and demanded to know my favorite artist of all time, I think I would piss myself (don’t like guns) and then answer John Hiatt.  I’m not sure how I first came to know his music.  I doubt it was through the radio, since he’s never gotten a whole lot of exposure that way.  I do know that my first Hiatt album, and still in my view the best, is “Slow Turning.”

Released in 1988, “Slow Turning” is rock solid from the first song (“Drive South,” which I once used to convince a girl to invite me to Nashville for the weekend) to the last (“Feels Like Rain,” which it often does when you’re listening to Hiatt).  The album also contains one of my absolute favorite songs of all time, “Icy Blue Heart,” which I hope to sing in a karaoke bar before I die or, given how tragic the song is, in a karaoke bar WHILE I die.

On other albums, Hiatt occasionally gets a little too cute and clever for his own good, but that is not the case with “Slow Turning.”  Pick this one up, pop it into your car’s CD player, and go for a drive on your favorite scenic highway.  You will not be disappointed.     

Desert Island Discs… The Housemartins, “London 0, Hull 4″

This is the second in a series about music that has shaped my life or that simply kicks major ass.  Greatest hits collections not included.

The Housemartins are a great British band, now defunct, that combined smart, snappy lyrics about about the UK’s disaffected working class with incredibly danceable melodies that almost, but not quite, make you forget what they’re talking about.  On “London 0, Hull 4” (a soccer reference) the band cranks out one great song after another about the perils of sitting idly by while the rich and powerful stuff their faces and crush the little guy. 

It’s interesting to me that I love this album just as much today as a proud member of the upper class as I did in the mid-1980s, when I was taking $20 out of the ATM machine and making it last all week long.  Should the revolution ever come, I will crank this one up to 11 as they drag me out of my McMansion and cut my well-coiffed head off.  

My favorite track on the album — “I’ll Be Your Shelter (Just Like a Shelter)” — has nothing to do with politics; it’s simply about one person being there for another.  About halfway through, lead singer Paul Heaton says, “Let me hear the choir,” and, sure enough, a gospel choir kicks in, singing “I will see you through.”  Toward the end, Heaton starts wailing “He’s alright” over and over again in ways that would leave a mere mortal’s vocal cords in shreds.  (Believe me, I’ve tried it.)   

The album cover perhaps says it best, “16 songs — 17 hits!”

Desert Island Discs: Holly Cole Trio, “Don’t Smoke In Bed”

This is the first in a series about music that has shaped my life or that simply kicks major ass.  Greatest hits collections not included.

Holly Cole is someone who deserves to be WAY more famous than she is. “Don’t Smoke In Bed,” released in 1993, is not her first album and she’s put out many more since then (most without Aaron Davis and David Piltch, two-thirds of the original trio). But it’s the first album of hers that I purchased and I still believe it’s the best, if only for the opening track, a masterful cover of “I Can See Clearly Now (the Rain Is Gone).” I first heard her version of this song on VH-1. I was wandering around my apartment in NYC, not really paying attention to the TV, when I heard this VOICE. I literally stopped what I was doing and stood in front of the TV, completely transfixed. I DARE you to listen to this song and not get the chills. It can’t be done! I have listened to this song at moments of great happiness in my life and at moments of crushing sadness. It all works. The rest of the album is wonderful, too, especially “The Tennesee Waltz,” “Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday,” and “Que Sera Sera.”